Second Edition of “Warmth”, and editing in general
Sera – Protagonist of “Warmth”.
Thanks for hanging in there with me through all of the trials and tribulations that 2013 has had to bring. As you know if you follow my blog, my father passed away on January 3 of this year, and it’s been one thing after another since. First we had to raise money for funeral expenses, which I thank God and the many wonderful donors who helped us for the fact that we were able to do. Since then it has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for me. I tried to do a physical labor inclusive job while grieving, and it turned out disastrously. I am passing my classes at school this semester, though, and keeping up with things the best that I can.
One thing I have decided to do, since I have summer coming up and will have time on my hands since I won’t be going to school this summer (I need time off to adjust to my loss and changes in my life, something I didn’t give myself because I didn’t want to withdraw this semester) is that I will be working on a series of re-edited reissues of my first three books.
Well, I am happy to say that the first of the three is already done!
The Warmth Second Edition
What’s New:
- New Cover Art: I’ve revised the cover art for all three editions of the book: the hardback edition (available for $33 on Lulu.com), the paperback (available on CreateSpace for $17.50) – and on the eBook for the Kindle, which will be available in a day or two.
- New Layout: The Second Edition features a new, easier-to-read layout based upon several mainstream paperbacks I studied while reformatting it. Chapter headings are easier to find and easier to look at.
- Fresh Editing: I used some new tools, as well as my own eyeballs. Details below.
The Proofreading Experience
I used two different proofreading softwares to improve the quality of editing in the second edition of “Warmth.” I would have used Grammarly, but I couldn’t really afford the $29 monthly fee for use. Also – I started out using Grammarly on the re-edit of my larger tome, the nearly 500 page “The Moon Cried Blood,” and about 45 pages into the editing process, the computer I have Word 2007 installed on stopped working. I do not have Word 2007 on my other computer, the one I wrote all of my novels on, and Word 2003 does not meet the minimum requirements for Grammarly.
The tools I ended up using are Ginger – which is free – and Perfect-It, which is 99 dollars. I have a 30 day trial. If I can come up with 99 dollars, I rate it as totally worth it. I would need the pro version (which costs 99 dollars) due to the length of my files. My preference for these two over Grammarly is not just a cost thing. I had a lot of trouble with the server connection for the Grammarly Word plug-in, so Grammarly basically is only useful to me as a web-based program.
Like Spellcheck, these are assistance devices that work best if the human driving them is also playing close attention. In my ideal world, I would be running all three, because they each catch different types of errors. However, this is not an ideal world. I would have to say that Ginger rocks my socks. Not only is it free, but it is probably the best of the three. However, Grammarly is better with punctuation, and Perfect-It is very good for helping to ferret out inconsistencies such as inconsistent use of numbers (spelled out as words, or as numerical characters), etc. So if I could afford it, I would have all three.
The Grammarly plug in for the internet is really cool, too. Especially cool for bloggers.
Sumiko Saulson 